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B/V differentiation in Spanish

  Tags: Phonetics | Spanish
 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages Post Reply
32 messages over 4 pages: 1 2 3 4 
getreallanguage
Diglot
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 Message 25 of 32
27 March 2012 at 4:11pm | IP Logged 
Ari wrote:
mrwarper wrote:
To me it kind of makes sense (two sounds = two letters), but if you have a look at historical texts you'll see they're often mixed.

Heck, you can look at modern Spanish words and see the historical mixing. Comparing with French tells me that "beber" was probably once "bever" (like in English "beverage") and "caballo" was probably "cavallo" (like in English "cavalry").


There is indeed evidence of those words being spelled like that in the past.
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Serpent
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 Message 26 of 32
27 March 2012 at 11:06pm | IP Logged 
Ari wrote:
mrwarper wrote:
To me it kind of makes sense (two sounds = two letters), but if you have a look at historical texts you'll see they're often mixed.

Heck, you can look at modern Spanish words and see the historical mixing. Comparing with French tells me that "beber" was probably once "bever" (like in English "beverage") and "caballo" was probably "cavallo" (like in English "cavalry").
they both had b's originally in Latin.
In general, French is far more likely to be umm... innovative, hehe. Ie raping the original forms violently. Spanish does it a lot too, Portuguese and Italian a bit less imo.
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Ari
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 Message 27 of 32
28 March 2012 at 6:58am | IP Logged 
Serpent wrote:
they both had b's originally in Latin.
In general, French is far more likely to be umm... innovative, hehe. Ie raping the original forms violently. Spanish does it a lot too, Portuguese and Italian a bit less imo.

Holy etymology, Batman! What does that mean? Was 'b' and 'v' already mixing it up in vernacular Latin, or what?
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kman543210
Diglot
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 Message 28 of 32
28 March 2012 at 9:02am | IP Logged 
Ari wrote:
Serpent wrote:
they both had b's originally in Latin.
In general, French is far more likely to be umm... innovative, hehe. Ie raping the original forms violently. Spanish does it a lot too, Portuguese and Italian a bit less imo.

Holy etymology, Batman! What does that mean? Was 'b' and 'v' already mixing it up in vernacular Latin, or what?


I believe that the Latin /b/ between vowels probably became /v/ in Vulgar Latin, so that Latin bibere became bever in Old Spanish. With the Castilian merger of the phonemes /b/ and /v/, the spelling was probably changed back to "b" to match the original Latin spelling.

This happened with other words as well:
(Latin, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, French)
caballus, caballo, cavallo, cavalo, cheval
probare, probar, provare, provar, prouver
habere, haber, avere, haver, avoir
debere, deber, dovere, dever, devoir
faba, haba, fava, fava, feve

Edited by kman543210 on 28 March 2012 at 9:15am
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petteri
Triglot
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 Message 30 of 32
19 September 2012 at 4:19pm | IP Logged 
Tadeo wrote:
Back to the original question, I'd say keeping b/v distinct would be very noticeable (which may or may not "grate" the listener's ears) in the following contexts:

- B in intervocalic position. Pronouncing beber or saber as [beber] and [saber] instead of [beβer] and [saβer] really stands out.


Strange. It often sounds to me like beber is pronounced as [beber] and saber almost like [saver]. But my native language is Finnish. So those b and v do not quite match with English. But it sounds to me like b is often pronounced bit differently in those two words.

Edited by petteri on 19 September 2012 at 4:22pm
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ArgSp&Malayalam
Diglot
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 Message 31 of 32
19 September 2012 at 8:25pm | IP Logged 
kman543210 wrote:
Ari wrote:
Serpent wrote:
they both had b's originally in Latin.
In general, French is far more likely to be umm... innovative, hehe. Ie raping the original forms violently. Spanish does it a lot too, Portuguese and Italian a bit less imo.

Holy etymology, Batman! What does that mean? Was 'b' and 'v' already mixing it up in vernacular Latin, or what?


I believe that the Latin /b/ between vowels probably became /v/ in Vulgar Latin, so that Latin bibere became bever in Old Spanish. With the Castilian merger of the phonemes /b/ and /v/, the spelling was probably changed back to "b" to match the original Latin spelling.

This happened with other words as well:
(Latin, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, French)
caballus, caballo, cavallo, cavalo, cheval
probare, probar, provare, provar, prouver
habere, haber, avere, haver, avoir
debere, deber, dovere, dever, devoir
faba, haba, fava, fava, feve


In Italian, the present of DOVERE is either DEBBO or DEVO ;)
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nonneb
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Studies: Mandarin, Hungarian, French

 
 Message 32 of 32
20 September 2012 at 4:48pm | IP Logged 
In Honduras I see lots of signs which use words like "sebende" (se vende) or "ebitese," even on official printed
signs at bus stations, and in speech I have never noticed any difference between b and v. Also, when I see students
take notes in Spanish they appear to more or less shun even using the letter v in writing (secondary school
graduates). Just an interesting thing I've noticed that I hadn't noticed in other parts of the hispanophone world.


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